Trying to issue the command:
shutdown -h now
From an xterm, particularly when in run level 5, causes the
shutdown to stop just after issueing the
shutdown message. At that point, the shutdown appears to
stop, while the machine seems vaguely responsive (numlock
works, changing vc's works) but there is no way to force the
shutdown to continue, or to abort it. ctrl-alt-delete
appears to be ignored.
seen on several support tickets in 5.2, and duplicated
on a p100, 32meg, s3 vision 968 vid card (apu) running 5.9.